CANBERRA: The return of foreign troops to East Timor to quell deadly clashes between sacked military police and government troops shows the tiny, resource-rich young nation is not ready to stand on its own, analysts said on Thursday.
Sporadic fighting, sparked by the cash-strapped East Timorese government’s decision to sack almost half the country’s military after they went on strike to protest poor conditions and pay, also brought long simmering ethnic tensions to the surface.
East Timor, which shares a land border with Indonesia’s West Timor, became the world’s newest nation in 2002 after a bloody 1999 vote to break free from nearly 25 years of Indonesian rule.
Deakin University political analyst Damien Kingsbury said Dili would need international help to settle and grow for a long time to come and that there was likely to be many Indonesians gloating over the sight of East Timor teetering on failure.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that in Indonesia there’s a lot of people who are just saying ‘I told you so’ — that East Timor wasn’t a viable proposition without an Indonesian presence,” Kingsbury told Reuters.
Australia sent commandos to secure East Timor’s capital Dili on Thursday ahead of the arrival of 1,300 troops. Malaysia is sending 275 para-commandos late on Thursday, while a contingent of police from Portugal is also due to arrive in coming weeks.
Dili has also asked New Zealand for help.
East Timor is divided along east-west ethnic lines and the small country’s army and police reflects the division. Most of the sacked soldiers come from the west.
The sacked officers complain of poor working conditions and pay but also of ethnic discrimination by eastern commanders.
“My government has to accept responsibility for failing to address these problems when they arose, two, three years ago,” East Timorese Foreign Minister Ramos-Horta told Australian television on Wednesday. “It is obvious that our police force, though it has had impressive training in the past and in some areas they have performed well, it remains very divided and remain fragile.”—Reuters
